


name undone

by Tridraconeus



Series: penance [5]
Category: Dishonored
Genre: Alcohol, Face Painting, Fugue Feast (Dishonored), Gen, Sparring, Swordfighting, black magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:22:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22111012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tridraconeus/pseuds/Tridraconeus
Summary: He made it as far as the abandoned courtyard before something caught his attention.It was Corvo, running through forms with the steady assurance of someone who had done them thousands of times before. Thomas recognized him by his expertise before he could make out anything else distinctive, and his mouth went dry for a moment. Not only was Corvo experienced, he made it look good— made it look easy, like the blade was a flawless extension of himself. Away from the furor of combat Thomas could really appreciate his mastery of the blade.
Series: penance [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/788454
Comments: 6
Kudos: 25





	name undone

**Author's Note:**

> me popping in to update a series that is three years old: haha hi dishonored fandom it's been a while. title from [the deserter's song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O78edVvc-p8)

**Dunwall**

**Fugue Feast, 1847-1848**

Thomas had never been the biggest fan of Fugue. For one, it was a revel. For two, it was a waste of time.

For three, unless he wanted to get drunk, get laid, or get into a fight, there was nothing to do. 

He hadn’t gotten drunk since the refinery fire. He hadn’t gotten _laid_ since before the refinery fire. He’d gotten into plenty of fights, though never from the light-headed giddy malice that Fugue tended to bring out in people so inclined.

Malia sat across from him in the servant’s quarters, painstakingly painting his face. Serkonan in design— Bastillian. He’d never been, but she spoke highly of the beaches, the fruit, the intelligence to be found— the festivals, where fishermen disappeared for a month and returned, painted their faces and paraded through the city with their massive catch. 

She chose blue, for him. She set it down in wide patches on his forehead, around one eye, on his cheeks and near his lips. She paused every now and then to take a drink from her whiskey bottle. 

She textured it with lighter blues and finally bright spots of white. The paint felt thick and cool against his skin.

“There,” she said finally, setting down her brush and pulling her hand mirror out to show him. “Now you’re ready to go out and have some fun.”

It looked, altogether, as if he were erupting in scales and rough, pebbled skin in patches. 

People didn’t always rely on masks for Fugue, of course, they did occasionally put on face paint— body paint, for the particularly brave— but usually it was abstract, or cheekily heretical, or if there was an edge of the monstrous it was because they had chosen to paint a monster on themselves. What Malia had done was make him look like _he_ was the monster; like he’d rubbed his skin away to reveal something far more dangerous underneath.

He didn’t expect to like it, but he did. Smudges of purple paint at the very edges of his jaw didn’t help his liking. _That_ felt wrong, somehow. 

“Aren’t you going to go out?” He leaned forward to reach for her whiskey before she elbowed it off the table. She took it from him and laughed.

“ _I’m_ going to stay here and get drunk, and then I’m going to haul idiots out of the Wrenhaven tomorrow morning.”

It had been so long since he’d seen her enthusiastic about something that he let the matter drop and let her shove him up. “Go! Get outta here, Everett.”

He did, before she shoved him out as well.

He wasn’t in any way decent to do much of anything, his jacket was still thrown on his bunk and he was wearing a white shirt, but his pants were black and he had on a sturdy belt, good boots, and had his blade by his side, so he didn’t bother in making himself look presentable. It had been years, but he still felt uncomfortably exposed and naked without a mask and jacket. He _was_ presentable-- just not to his standards. 

_To the Void with standards!_ Malia crowed in the back of his head. _This is Fugue!_

And he didn’t _like_ Fugue, he reminded himself. 

He made it as far as the abandoned courtyard before something caught his attention.

It was Corvo, running through forms with the steady assurance of someone who had done them thousands of times before. Thomas recognized him by his expertise before he could make out anything else distinctive, and his mouth went dry for a moment. Not only was Corvo experienced, he made it look good— made it look easy, like the blade was a flawless extension of himself. Away from the furor of combat Thomas could really appreciate his mastery of the blade. 

_Like Daud’s_ , a tiny, traitorous voice in the back of his head chimed. Daud was behind him now. As far as Everett was concerned, he didn’t know the man.

“Lord Protector,” he ventured, when Corvo finished a blistering rendition of a complex form. Corvo rolled his shoulders out and turned neatly on his heel. 

He was wearing a mask, too, and if Thomas wasn’t so well-trained he would have frozen solid; blood turned to ice in his veins. 

He didn’t have nightmares about that mask anymore. They’d stopped. He’d stopped dreaming about much of anything, really. 

Maybe Malia was right— he needed to relax.

“Everett,” Corvo acknowledged, and suddenly he was Corvo again. Not a phantom; not anything Thomas had to ward against. 

“While I do appreciate attending to the basics, would you like a partner, Lord Protector?”

He’d sparred with Corvo one other time after he’d been recruited. It had been a very polite, perfunctory spar, as things went; Corvo knocked him on his ass and moved on. It had been honorable. It had been safe.

It was Fugue. Corvo paused in thought for a long moment, and nodded.

“On your mark, Everett.”

Thomas bowed, just below his shoulders, and lunged into action. Corvo had been doing a form meant primarily to disorient, to disarm; Thomas mirrored it with its more aggressive cousin. 

Corvo was a master, and saw the flowing combination of moves and how they would unfold from something as simple as Thomas’ stance and the flick of his wrist. He deflected the first blow and redirected the second, allowing Thomas to press an offense until they were in the center of the courtyard. 

The air seemed chillier. The lanterns set at the base of stairs or on the edges of fences took on a different cast. 

Thomas recognized the Void. It was easy enough to disregard it and focus instead on the real challenge, Corvo.

The mask made the hair on the back of his neck stand up and the clash of their blades made his bones ache. 

It wasn’t _enough_. Normally, Corvo would have knocked him on his ass by now. Thomas was good, but not as good as Corvo. 

“Give me everything you’ve got!” It felt strange and wrong to be demanding that of Corvo, of his master— not his master, but his commander, his superior, that fit better and didn’t make him feel strange— but this wasn’t real. The aches would be. This wasn’t. He was allowed to want to pull out every inch of Corvo’s immense skill and throw himself against it. 

Corvo’s hand clenched around the hilt of his folding blade. He lunged forward, almost too fast for Thomas to see in the unearthly illumination, and caught him across the cheek with the hilt. Trying to knock some sense into him, maybe.

“Are you sure you’re willing to face that?”

“I’m willing,” Thomas choked, even though he wasn’t sure what he was _willing_ to do; what he was _consenting_ to, “I’m _willing_.” 

Corvo stepped back, prompting Thomas to take a smaller step forward as if to press an ill-advised offensive, and disappeared. 

He was so experienced with the maneuver that he felt it almost by proxy, the bend of time and space around Corvo as he repositioned behind Thomas. Normally, he’d cry out as he was supposed to— _black magic!_ — but this was Fugue, and it wasn’t real, so he allowed himself to react as he had been trained, and how he had likewise trained himself how not to react. It all got muddied, some days. Who he was. Who he pretended to be. The less lies, the better. 

The _blade_. 

Corvo was giving him everything. He’d meant, of course, his skill; his bite; the things Everett knew about and admired. This, though, was magic, and he was showing Thomas. Everett. Because he trusted him? Because he judged him a worthy opponent? Because he missed the sensation of the Void reaching out with every tap into it?

Or because it was Fugue, and this wasn’t real? He allowed himself to muse until the musing got in the way and slowed him down, winning him a lash of the flat against his back as Corvo repositioned once again. 

Dunwall’s swordfighting style was direct— polite, even. It often came down to who was better at locking blades, wasn’t outnumbered, or who chose to draw their pistol first.

Serkonan swordfighting was dirty. Fast, and geared more to utility than show, but still show enough that an entire competition sprung up around masterful performance. Corvo was a native to it; Thomas had been trained in it. It showed in the way they exchanged blows.

Thomas faltered first the merest moment when Corvo managed to disorient him, little more than a blur of mass and sharp edges and the gaping grin of that _mask_ , slamming the hilt of his blade into Thomas’ shoulder and shoving him down. 

Normally, that would be it. Corvo would offer his bested opponent a hand up and nod curtly, and move on to the next. 

This was Thomas, though, one of his spies, who he rarely if ever sparred with, and it was Fugue, so he instead took an appraising glance at Thomas’ condition— panting but far from exhausted— and leaned down to pick him up by the front of his shirt. Pushed him back to reestablish distance. Came at him again.

Thomas was beginning to see the allure of Fugue. 

Corvo held off on throwing transversals into the mix again until he and Thomas settled into an easy rhythm of exchanging blows and parries. Thomas took the break for what it was and let Corvo test his guard for a minute. 

When he was a child, one of the most important lessons he learned was that everyone wanted a perfect weapon; but a weapon didn’t have to be perfect, it just had to work. When he took himself under Daud’s wing, he learned how to take a weapon and shape it to perfection. He never forgot the uses of an imperfect, working one. When Daud was an occasional hands-on teacher, capable and cruel, Thomas learned also that there was no such thing as a perfect plan. 

He didn’t need a perfect plan to spar with Corvo. He just needed one that _worked_. 

He ducked under a swipe of the blade and jumped back out of range, only for Corvo to follow the movement with a transversal. Evidently, he’d decided that Thomas had rested enough. 

They dove into each other, the blades meeting with enough force to make sparks leap. Thomas thought, briefly, how it must look with Corvo’s mask and his face paint. Strange, surely. Stranger still with the violet light reflecting off of their blades. He wasn’t doing this to catch anybody’s attention, and neither was Corvo; they both ignored it. 

Corvo knocked him on his ass again by slamming the hilt of his blade into Thomas’ chest and hooking a leg behind his knee.This time, Thomas didn’t wait to be yanked up; he rolled to his side, too involved in the spar to mourn the washing he’d have to do on his shirt. It felt good, to not worry. Something was sloughing away. 

With Corvo, too. Thomas couldn’t see his eyes past the mask; couldn’t see his expression, but the way he weaved transversals into his swordwork was smoother each time. Thomas had never forgotten how to read body language when faces were concealed or covered; Corvo was excited. He was enjoying this as much as Thomas was.

Thomas allowed that knowledge to embolden him and lunged forward when Corvo skipped back.

Time froze. His blade was pointed at Corvo’s throat. That had to be intentional. He would have scoffed at Corvo having a flair for the dramatic, but he was frozen, and— well. He already knew that. 

The Bond was broken, but the Void still found something of a home in him and granted him some level of awareness. Corvo was prowling around his motionless body, the pressure of his stare prickling and heavy as he surveyed his posture; his grip on his blade; the thick, bold false-scales that Malia had painted onto his face and the new scuffs on his white shirt. 

Corvo touched his shoulder. Time resumed, and he knew what he was expected to do. It made his heart pick up. He turned, locking blades with Corvo, taking advantage of his split focus and intentional mistake. 

Corvo was far stronger than Thomas; had height and weight and a few years and experience on him. Thomas’ arms shook with the effort of holding the bladelock. Corvo was pushing him back, making minute shoving movements that Thomas had to brace himself against-- all he could do was take it. If he retreated, he’d succumb to Corvo’s magic. It was all he could do to keep the bladelock and if he tried to kick Corvo he’d leave himself unbalanced. Shoving himself against Corvo was likewise a foolish plan, because he wouldn’t be able to move the man if he tried. 

No perfect plan. Not even a working one, except for holding the bladelock and hoping he could outlast Corvo’s magic.

He managed to keep it up for the entirety of twenty seconds, and then Corvo took a step backwards that he neglected to match. The swords left each other. The creeping chill of stopped time encased him, leaving him helpless once again. Corvo circled him. Thomas saw the movement of his arm raising, light flashing on his blade, and readied himself-- mentally, if not physically. 

Time resumed. Thomas gasped and twisted to block Corvo’s blade. It would have hit him with the flat; painful, and a taunt, but not at all lethal. Corvo was _playing_ with him-- hadn’t expected him to be able to counter, if the surprised whuff Thomas won indicated anything. He pressed his brief offensive, twisting his wrist to aim at Corvo’s shoulder. 

Corvo blocked him; deflected it, lunged forward to wrench the blade from his hand. It skittered away across the stones. Thomas jumped back in response, shaking out his hand, then held his hands up. Corvo stayed his offensive and simply stared at him, blade down by his knees now; threatless. Thomas was panting, he belatedly realized. 

“Your disengagement could use work,” Corvo finally said. 

“I’ll work on it,” Thomas replied. 

The courtyard cooled. Corvo’s attention turned from him to focus once more on forms.

“Enjoy Fugue, Everett,” Corvo finally called out to him as he bent to pick up his blade.

“I will,” Thomas called back. 

He went down to the docks and got into a fight. He drank an entire bottle of whiskey in less than ten seconds and promptly puked it all up, surrounded by cheering Eels. He got into another fight and then returned to the tower, where he scrubbed the face paint off and puked a few more times. Malia was in the bunkhouse with a small pile of whiskey bottles. He shared one with her, and they talked; laughed, and talked once more. By the time he felt tired enough to sleep she was slurring so severely he couldn’t understand a word she was saying and she certainly couldn’t walk, so he slung her arm over his shoulder and dragged them both to his bunk, where he pulled the blanket over them and promptly fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. 

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to leave me a kudos and/or comment if you enjoyed! They make my day! Also wow I missed Malia.


End file.
